In an effort to distinguish their services and identify a niche, most travel providers avoid positioning themselves in the way other online retailers might. Instead, they focus on services like travel meta-search (e.g. Skyscanner) or customer feedback (Tripadvisor). Shrouded in specialist services, it’s easy to forget that at their heart the majority of travel sites remain ecommerce providers.

Mobile commerce is very much here and now. A fifth of all online spend now is now on mobile, accounting for around £8bn. That's a huge figure, and it's only going to increase. So what are the key trends that are driving this growth? We've highlighted three here. Mobile first millennials People of all demographics are shopping on their mobile device, but there's a strong correlation with age.

At the start of the year, retailer John Lewis announced some impressive year on year sales figures, along with the revelation that more than three quarters of its site traffic on Christmas Day came from mobile devices. Its profits continue to look very healthy, and mobile is an ever growing proportion of its sales.